Sterile Session, Rash

A dish of strawberries was the reputed agency which brought to an abrupt close, last week, the 45th session of the Council of the League of Nations at Geneva (TIME, June 6).

The strawberries were eaten by Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France. As everyone knows some strawberries have a pollen which can produce on certain pollen-sensitive persons an irritating rash. Soon such a rash broke out upon M. Briand. Impetuous, he scratched. The rash spread, attacked the patient's eyelids, caused them to swell, to close one eye, nearly to close the other.

M. Briand's physicians endeavored to persuade him that he had contracted a different sort of rash (herpes zoster), but he insisted: C'est les fraises maudites!" ("It is those cursed strawberries"). . . .

Finally the afflicted French Foreign Minister retired to his bed in the Hotel des Bergues with a compress over both eyes. Into his bedroom came, daily, for conference, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann of Germany and Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain of Britain These "Big Three," putting their heads together, and occasionally calling in lesser statesmen for political consultation, virtually made up last week, the Council of the League of Nations. . . . Their problems :

Rhineland Evacuation. M Briand, sitting up in bed, reputedly told Dr. Stresemann with great vehemence that France will not hasten her evacuation of the Rhineland until Germany carries out more fully her disarmament obligations (TIME, Nov. 2, 1925). Dr Stresemann offered to produce photographs showing the destruction of German fortifications along the Polish frontier; but returned an evasive answer when M. Briand insisted that a French military commission be allowed to investigate the destroyed defenses in question.

"Reds." Sir Austen ChamberIain was known to have made every effort to persuade M. Briand and more especially Dr. Stresemann last week that France and Germany ought to support Great Britain in her severance of relations with Russia (TIME, May 16 et seq.). Sir Austen succeeded only so far as to get Dr. Stresemann to give newsgatherers an unsigned interview in which he said: "It is a great pity that some citizens of Soviet Russia seem to be doing unwise things which strengthen the hands of their enemies."

A well substantiated though sensational report told that Dr. Stresemann carried back to Berlin a secret British memorandum asking what would be the attitude of the German Government in the event that Soviet Russia should attack Poland, and France or Britain should wish to rush troops to Poland's defense over German soil. When these Russian matters were up for discussion, Foreign Minister August Zaleski of Poland was to be seen anxiously pattering in and out of M. Briand's bedchamber. When within, he often sat, rumor told, close at the bedside of M. Briand, attentive to his every word This was natural, this was prudent for France is the avowed protectress of Poland, and never was such protection more needed than last week, when Russo-Polish strife hung in the air. Shelved. The Council postponed consideration of the Albania-Jugoslavia dispute (TIME, June 6), and delayed to the September League Assembly all actions upon the nearly barren report of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference. Dr. Stresemann commented tartly upon this report last week. Said he: "Solution of the disarmament question, which appeared so simple a few years ago, would now seem to be definitely deferred. . . . Yet the very existence of the League depends upon a general reduction in armaments." Later in the day, M. Briand's "strawberry rash" became so severe that he hastily returned to Pans for expert treatment. The Council then dispersed, abandoning the Geneva scene to the Coolidge Naval Limitations Parley.